


Unicorn Blood (the Amalthea Remix)

by sophiahelix



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: remix_redux, F/F, Femslash, Rape, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-01
Updated: 2005-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hermione had little minnow-thoughts that darted about in her eyes, but she didn't tell them, and Luna didn't ask."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unicorn Blood (the Amalthea Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> Remix of Sinope's story "Unicorn Blood," sadly no longer available online.

Luna wore a word, hidden deep in her heart. It was a single word, pure and white and cool, and sometimes a voice whispered it while she slept, wandering through her dreams like something silvery and silent. When she woke she never could remember the voice, or the word.

Luna liked words. Luna liked words by themselves, and words strung into long sentences, and whole stories made up of words, like jewels on shining ropes. Words were music to her, pure substance, not truth or lies but something more real. Words were themselves, except for when they weren't.

Luna liked to talk, and she liked to listen. Before that spring she would have expected to do more listening than talking with Hermione Granger, but sometimes Hermione wasn't herself either. When it was the two of them, round a well-constructed campfire, their heads pillowed on their rucksacks, the words came out of Luna like birdsong, their pearls almost tangible in the firelight. With Hermione she could drift back into the days of her childhood, her head at her mother's knee, the lines of black text and dancing pictures bright on the crackling pages above her, and the sweet drone of her mother's voice stealing her away like a fairy queen.

There wasn't much else that Luna remembered but those stories of princesses and mermaids, dragons and unicorns. The evenings seemed always the same, her mother's cool hand stroking her hair and the words coming like a river. She thought there was a fire, and her father writing somewhere in the background, but when she remembered too hard it faded away.

So she told her stories to Hermione Granger, whose hair looked like it needed a cool hand to stroke it. Hermione had little minnow-thoughts that darted about in her eyes, but she didn't tell them, and Luna didn't ask.

Dragons ate maidens. Her mother had told her that. Dragons ate their hearts and their fingers and toes; they made nests of their hair, gold and amber and ebony, and they crunched up their bones like glass. Dragons would eat anybody's heart, like a piping-hot chestnut, but maidens' hearts were not warm at all. They were like snowflakes or ice, and a maiden's heart almost, but not quite, quenched the terrible thirst of a dragon, pouring down his burning throat like a long cold drink in summer.

Luna was afraid of dragons. This very island frightened her, a cold, grey, stony place with too many places for scaly things to hide. She thought Hermione might be afraid, too, but that Hermione would rather face a dragon than say so.

They followed the blood. Sheep's blood, in thin dribbles and thick clots, mixing with the mud that smeared their feet. Hermione said things to cheer Luna up, and Luna said things to cheer Hermione up, but she didn't think either of them really believed it.

On May Day Luna rose with the sun, silver-white dreams still dimly sweet in her mind, and bathed her face with dew. She plucked a handful of the few poor flowers that grew in the rocky crevice near their camping-cave, and sat to weave them together, the cold wetness creeping through the seat of her muddy trousers.

"I've found a clue," Hermione said, coming round with something in her cupped hand.

Luna looked. The thing was small and brown and dirty, dead. A cigarette.

"I think we've got them," Hermione said grimly, reaching for her wand.

Luna put her crown of wildflowers on her hair, which straggled, yellow and thick, over her shoulders.

When the dragon came upon them Luna was thinking of home. Home was a warm fire, a soft bed, food that didn't come in a tin and endless stacks of books. She was talking to Hermione, more words, when there was an enormous mountain of beast and fire, and then she was somewhere else, having worked her magic before she could even think.

It was the first time that she suspected words might be something other than what they seemed.

The scales and the smoke were flying at her, like a thousand nightmare eyes, and Luna was somewhere else again in a heartbeat. Only a moment lingered for her to notice that somewhere else was near Hermione, and then the monster's eyes were upon her.

Hermione fought. _A knight_ , Luna thought, dizzily, as she worked her magic again.

Nothing happened.

It was not the first time that she suspected magic might be something other than what it seemed.

She flew down the slope pell-mell, the sheltering rocks beneath her. Hermione ducked.

"Somebody put up a shield against Apparating!" Hermione cried, as if it mattered.

More fighting and the beast groaned, blind, but Luna felt him near her. She smelled the hot sulfur stink of his breath, heard the steam-whistle of his roar, shrank from the knives of his claws, the scrape of his scales, the lash of his tail. She felt all his ravenous, monstrous hunger, seeking her always with the whole of his terrible body.

_The word._

Like a thin, probing finger his lust entered her heart, looking for the word. She cried out softly, clutching at the vial around her neck, the talisman her mother had given her before she could remember anything. And still the beast pressed her.

Hermione was next to her now, panting and sweating, wand still pointing out. Luna's wand was somewhere in her robes, forgotten.

"Are you a virgin?" Hermione demanded, her words a useless buzz against the roar of the dragon.

"Yes, I suppose so, but -- " Luna tried to say, before Hermione began to talk again.

Would she never have done with _words_? Luna thought, gasping, before she knew what Hermione was telling her.

"No. No, we can just run," Luna tried to say, her throat dry. "We'll -- Hermione, we'll think of something else."

"It's the only way," said Hermione, gripping her wand, and Luna began to run.

The craving heat of the dragon had been terrible. Hermione's magic, strong and hatefully accurate, was worse. The spell hit Luna in the back like a punishing blow, and she fell.

 _A stone_ , thought Luna, frozen upon the ground. _A stone that grows_.

 _Cold_ , thought Luna, her legs bare now, and spread. _Maidens' hearts are cold._

The dragon's claws found purchase in the stony ground, and he began to climb the rise. A stench like death or rot came before him, filling Luna's wide-open nostrils.

 _Blood_ , thought Luna, watching Hermione bite her lips, her eyes fixed there by magic or cruelty. _She has blood on her mouth._

 _Pain_ , thought Luna, as Hermione's hand moved between her own legs, harsh. Hermione's eyes were screwed up tight, until she opened them to look at Luna, her gaze rough and possessive, terrifying. _There is only pain, in the end_.

The dragon's wings lifted, flapped, carrying him upwards.

 _Tears_ , thought Luna, as Hermione wept, pulling her fingers from Luna and beginning to prepare the stone phallus. _A frozen body has no tears._

 _Mother_ , thought Luna, as Hermione's hands made the thing fill her. _I have no mother_.

The ravaging desire of the dragon faltered, and the heat receded as he turned about in confusion. The pain was consuming, then less so, and in a moment between fire and ice, truth and lies, the word in Luna's heart rose up like music in her ears, singing out through her golden hair, her thin fingers and toes, her opened mouth, frozen like the maiden under glass.

The vial of unicorn blood around her neck burst, a burning cold rush that disappeared in an instant.

Hermione turned, the phallus in one hand and her wand in the other, and something shattered in the distance, drawing the cheated, blind dragon away. Her hands were on Luna then, shaking and rough and warm, drawing up Luna's clothing and making soft, inept caresses.

"Ennervate," Hermione said. Even her whisper held power.

Magic worked again. They went home. The word was gone, and something from her mother's face in her memory, like a slate wiped half-clean. In its place were long dreary years of loneliness, boredom, despair. Her father's back, hunched over reams of parchment.

Nothing silvery and silent came into her dreams again, but Luna waited.


End file.
